ATP Day 1 : “When’s ‘e coming on then?”

First band I saw on Friday was Black Dice. I’ve seen them before and enjoyed their racket at the GYBE event last year. This time around they didn’t really do much for me, not sure why because the material this time didn’t sound appreciably different from before.

Lee Scratch Perry was the next act I saw. I’d seen Scratch before at the Custard Factory and so I knew that he has a tendency to play looooooong sets, which is even more impressive when you realise the guy is in his seventies.Because of the strict timetable he had to play a truncated set. He came on after a cheesy call and response skit, dressed in a napoleonic tunic with brocade and gold epaulettes. He wasn’t happy with having nto keep to a timetable and kept muttering about having the shorten things. He did a cover of “Pappa was a Rolling Stone” which morphed into dread chanting about the banks. Towards the end he blessed his children like some amiable schizophrenic shamanic uncle. A legend who should have been give more time to play. Thinking about it, I think if Scratch were to be invited to curate an ATP that would be very interesting.

Next up The Actress. To begin with it sounded like a mix of murky loops and noise, but the patterns would morph very gradually and lock into a trancey, syncopated vibe. Interesting to listen to but it suffered from the difficulty in making a laptop performance interesting. A bloke came up to me and asked when The Actress was coming on. I had to point out that the bloke in the hoody who’d been standing behind a Macbook for the last half hour was the act.

I think this was the last act I saw on Friday, things get a little hazy after this so bear with me 🙂